


A Little Less Celestial

by Kedreeva



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Cuddling & Snuggling, Gen, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Literal Sleeping Together, Non-Sexual, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Other, Sharing a Bed, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 03:42:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19759891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kedreeva/pseuds/Kedreeva
Summary: Aziraphale accidentally falls asleep, and Crowley teaches him sleeping isn't so bad, really.





	A Little Less Celestial

Aziraphale startled awake, shoving several books off the edge of his desk and knocking into one of his bookshelves with one wing. Across the room, Crowley looked up from where he sat on the worn couch, his phone loose in his hands and his golden eyes wide. Heart hammering in his chest, Aziraphale looked over at him, trying to catch his breath.

"I fell asleep," he said, more than a little horrified at the idea. Angels did not _sleep_. He hadn't slept in _millennia_. In fact, he had only tried it once, and it had been dreadful, just an endless expanse of darkness in his mind and a total loss of sensory input.

"Yeahhh...." Crowley said, the word drawing out like a very confused question.

Aziraphale frowned. "I didn't mean to."

"It's alright," Crowley told him, looking like he understood perfectly well when he perfectly well did not. "Shop's locked up and I've just been playing games. I can go, if you like. If you want to-" He gestured vaguely in a way that told Aziraphale exactly nothing about what Crowley thought he might want to do.

" _I don't sleep_ ," Aziraphale reiterated. "I haven't slept in _millennia_ , and certainly not on _accident_. That's absurd."

Crowley smiled a touch sadly. "You're less.... celestial now, angel."

"Less celestial?" Aziraphale's huge, white wings spread up, imposing and beautiful and a reminder of exactly how celestial he was, as if Crowley could ever forget. "Do I look _less celestial_?"

Crowley, for once, did not take the bait. "Haven't you noticed anything else? Like getting hungry- oh, I suppose you wouldn't have, you're used to eating."

"You've been getting hungry?" Aziraphale said, a little confused himself, now. Crowley rarely, if ever, ate anything at all, despite that so many of their meetings had been over food. "You never said..."

"It's not a big deal." Crowley rolled one shoulder in a shrug, looking away. "I figure it's... just a consequence of our actions. You don't abandon Heaven and Hell without suffering a few Earthly consequences."

"We didn't abandon them," Aziraphale said softly. " _They_ abandoned _us_."

"It amounts to the same thing," Crowley said, not looking at him.

"The distinction matters," Aziraphale told him, firmly enough that Crowley snuck a look before dropping his gaze back to his hands. "Or it should, at least. We didn't do anything wrong, to choose humanity. Crowley, look at me." When Crowley did, he shook his head a little bit. "Whatever is happening to us, it's not a punishment this time. You weren't cast out again. We chose to-... oh, _go off together,_ wasn't it? We just didn't go very _far_."

Laughter puffed out of Crowley at Aziraphale quoting his own words back to him. He couldn't deal with this right now. Maybe not ever. "Do you have a bed?"

Aziraphale blinked at the sudden change in subject. "I- well." He didn't, actually, or at least he never had before, but if he was going to get tired and nod off and need sleep like some kind of _mortal_ , he supposed he had better. "I haven't. I never needed one."

Crowley swallowed, opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again and said: "I have one, if you'd like. I haven't used it much."

From the look on Aziraphale's face, they both clearly understood that Aziraphale could miracle himself up a bed with hardly any effort. For that matter, he could sleep on the couch Crowley currently occupied, if he had to. The offer had almost nothing to do with convenience, since they would have to put a great deal more effort into going all the way to his place. Aziraphale hadn't visited since the night they swapped places.

"I think," Aziraphale said slowly, "that if I am to be sleeping more regularly, I ought to have one of my own."

Crowley twitched a smile at the soft letdown. He clearly hadn't expected anything else. "Do you want me to close up on my way out?"

Aziraphale hesitated, belly swooping at the thought of being left alone for this. "You're leaving?" He didn't _want_ Crowley to leave.

It was Crowley's turn to look confused. "You're going to sleep, yeah?"

"Well, I- well, _yes_ , but I-" Heat pinked his cheeks a little, something else that had never happened before, and Aziraphale noticed Crowley staring openly. "Doesn't it _scare_ you at all?"

"It's just sleeping," Crowley said, but as soon as he'd said it, he seemed to realize what Aziraphale wasn't asking him aloud. "I'll walk you up," he added. "I'll make sure you're safe before I go."

Relief washed through Aziraphale at the offer. "Oh, thank you."

* * *

They collected themselves from their seats and Aziraphale showed him to the stairwell that only existed some of the time, the one which led to his bedroom. Crowley had assumed it existed, if only for pretenses, and that it would be full of books rather than beds. And it _was_ , he realized as they crested the stairs and came into view of it.

At a flick of Aziraphale's hand, the books and papers piled up like a dragon's nest jumped to the sides and filed themselves neatly onto the shelves ringing the entire room. Crowley wondered, briefly, if they were in any kind of order or if the spell had not been that specific. He supposed it didn't matter. All Aziraphale would have to do is hold out his open hand and whatever document he required would come to him like an obedient pup.

"I haven't been in many bedrooms," Aziraphale said, turning to look at Crowley from the middle of the room.

Crowley hadn't either. Most of his experiences with sleeping had been after one kind of gluttonous binge or another, and left him with very little memory of where he'd put his head when he fell asleep. "Not very many, eh?"

Aziraphale gave him a withering look. "Do you think I need to move the bookshelves first?" he said, instead of taking the bait.

"No," Crowley answered, and took a quick, almost theatrical look around the room and then pointed at one of the more well-made bookshelves, the dark one in the corner made from some kind of very old, very sturdy and, most importantly, very _beautiful_ wood. It leapt to his command, twisting itself up and spreading over the floor until it had turned into an equally beautiful, dark bedframe.

"Oh," Aziraphale said, surprised. "Oh, you- you've kept the shelves!"

"Very clever of me, wasn't it?" Crowley said, a little slyly. He had left the headboard as a bookshelf, so that nothing much would have to move. Along the base of the bed were more shelves, to make room for the books that would have been blocked by the mattress. "You should make the rest."

Aziraphale gave him a hesitant smile, thought for a moment, and snapped at the frame. Pale blue tartan pillows appeared atop the plush mattress, partially covered by the matching duvet. Crowley made a slightly pained face at the decoration, but it seemed to please Aziraphale a great deal so he kept his commentary to himself.

"That wasn't so hard," Aziraphale said. He crossed the few steps to the edge of the bed and pulled back the covers, setting a knee on the mattress until Crowley made a noise that stopped him.

"In your street clothes?" Crowley asked.

Aziraphale blinked. "They're clean," he said, and Crowley rolled half his body with his eyes.

"It's not- They're- you can't just sleep in them." Crowley told him. "They're not comfortable!"

Aziraphale had the grace not to look too offended at the suggestion that his attire was not _comfortable_. "They are to me."

Crowley snapped his fingers and Aziraphale's clothing appeared folded neatly on a chair that hadn't existed ten seconds prior, and Aziraphale himself was newly dressed in powder-blue flannel pajamas with not a trace of check on them. He had, out of a sense of self-preservation, left off the matching nightcap.

"You've got to do it right at least once," he said to Aziraphale's frown.

With a little noise of consternation, Aziraphale turned away and clambered into the bed, one wing flicking out for balance on the squishy mattress. Crowley watched him fuss with trying to get the covers out from under himself. He finally triumphed, folded his wings tightly, and laid down on his side. Once still, his wings slacked open a little, relaxing.

"It _is_ soft," he admitted after a moment.

Crowley grinned. He really did enjoy sleeping. It was just so _peaceful_. He supposed maybe if he were human, and had to have all that calming darkness interrupted by dreams and nightmares and whatnot, he might like it a great deal less, but without them it just felt like... home. It felt like being back in the void of space, with endless, comforting black stretched in every direction.

"It's better on your belly," Crowley said, gesturing as he produced a second chair and grabbed it up. "You can spread your wings out then."

He could feel Aziraphale's eyes on him in the absence of an answer, so he turned to look. Aziraphale's eyes dropped a little, just shy of meeting his. "If I did that, there wouldn't be much room for anyone else."

Crowley smiled, albeit a little sadly. "Expecting company?"

"Hoping, perhaps." Aziraphale flicked a glance up to him, though he looked like he had just given serious consideration to swallowing his own tongue to see if he could take the words back. "Silly of me, I suppose."

He began to turn over, and Crowley got the distinct impression that one of those peculiar, life-defining moments was about to pass him by so fast he might actually stumble in its wake. It was the sort of moment that required a great deal of thinking, and the sort of moment that gave one no time in which to do it, and so when Aziraphale swung his wing out the way Crowley had just told him he could, Crowley's hand shot out and grabbed the edge of it before it could land among the rumpled covers.

They stilled.

"You have to ask," Crowley said quietly, when Aziraphale finally looked at him. He said it with no particular inflection because it meant a great deal to him, and if he had yelled it, Aziraphale might not have gotten the point over the volume. But he needed to know. He needed to know that he would not be intruding, that he had an invitation.

Gently, Aziraphale tugged his wing free of Crowley's grasp and folded it, once more lying on his side. He looked Crowley up and down, weighing something Crowley could not see, before he finally nodded. "Come to bed, Crowley," he said. "Stay with me, this once."

Crowley's heart clawed at its ribbed cage. "Just once?" He didn't think he could take that offer. It would kill him to say no, but it would destroy him to say yes. Crowley was not one for letting go of anything, much less when it came to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale swallowed, then licked his lips, and then said: "No."

With a quiet snap, Crowley's street clothes lay folded atop Aziraphale's, leaving him in comfortable undergarments. Aziraphale reached and pulled the covers toward him as Crowley put one knee on top of the bed, waiting as Crowley carefully climbed in beside him. Folding his wings tightly, Crowley got himself partially under the covers and Aziraphale threw the rest over him.

They lay there, facing one another, until Aziraphale finally spoke. "What now?" he asked.

"You just close your eyes and wait," Crowley told him. He'd never had company to try to sleep near. He did not _admit_ to that, but he did wonder if it made a difference at all.

"Just like that?" Aziraphale said. "You just- you go unconscious just like that, just because you're not doing anything else? That seems rather alarming, doesn't it?"

Crowley couldn't help his amusement. It certainly didn't seem very prudent, considering their very long lifespans and the amount of time they were capable of spending not doing anything else. "It's not alarming, angel, it just... is."

"How do you know when to wake up?"Aziraphale asked suddenly, already starting to sit up. "The last time I slept it was only for a few minutes, just to try it."

Crowley, with all the unthinking he had done to grab Aziraphale's wing, now raised his own wing like a barrier so Aziraphale could not get out of bed, and then brought it down such that it became a second blanket and Aziraphale was forced to lie down to avoid being smothered by it. Crowley's vision went a little tipsy at the adrenaline of making that kind of move.

"Lie _down_ , Aziraphale," he instructed. "Come here."

Without a single brain cell firing, Crowley wiggled over until he could take Aziraphale's hands in his and touch their foreheads together. Aziraphale relaxed instantly at the contact, letting out a shaky sigh obviously meant to calm him.

"I will wake us up," Crowley promised him earnestly. "It will only be for a few hours, and you'll feel good when it's over."

"I don't like this," Aziraphale said, but he grabbed onto Crowley's hands when Crowley made to release him. "Not that." He swallowed a bit nervously. "I like that part."

"Me too," Crowley ventured. He let his wing slack, let the weight of it gently blanket Aziraphale for real, and closed his eyes. "The rest won't be so bad, you'll see."

He felt Aziraphale relax bit by bit and he waited patiently until he heard Aziraphale's breathing even out into sleep. Aziraphale's hands went slack in his own, and Crowley gently disentangled them. He brushed the back of one finger lightly over Aziraphale's cheek, and smiled to himself.

In a few hours he would wake Aziraphale, and they might address what becoming _a little less celestial_ really entailed, and some of it would be good and some of it would be bad... but for now he was content to lie here in peace beside him, just like this, and guard his rest.


End file.
